Huawei's Ascend P6 does look a lot like an iPhone in the right light

Back in June, Huawei unveiled their latest high-end Android smartphone, the Ascend P6, that immediately struck a familiar design chord. Right from the first teaser images, the comparisons to the iPhone started to fly, mainly due to the metal banding that encases the phone around the edges. Now, since Andrew Martonik over at Android Central has an Ascend P6 in for review, he's gone and taken a closer look, setting it side-by-side with an iPhone 4S:

Particularly, you can see almost exact similarities with the metal banding around the sides, the camera and speaker grille at the top of the phones. The similarities go further with an iPhone 5, which is simply taller and thinner and therefore looks more like a typical 16:9 Android phone to begin with.

I had the pleasure of attending the grand launch of the Ascend P6 in London, and I have to agree with everything he says. The resemblance in those key areas is uncanny, and the image up top is a comparison with my own iPhone 5. Sure, the Ascend P6 is taller, and thinner, but that band around the edge is very familiar looking. Though, don't they always say imitation is the best form of flattery?

Head on over to Android Central to see a full comparison gallery with the iPhone 4S, as well as the extra image below from the launch event. We're not saying Huawei is out and out copying Apple, but there's plenty of similarity, don't you think?

I will agree, but let's remember the precedent for their design was probably the iPhone 4, 4s, 5.
So when you say better looking, that is like saying the milk carton for one store looks better than the milk carton from the company that designed the original milk carton.

The band itself is a little similar, but that's about it. But let's be honest: the iPhone wasn't the first phone to do many of the things that the iPhone does, even if it was the first phone to do them well enough to make the smart phone mainstream.

All this "they copied the iPhone" stuff is getting ridiculous.

Do other companies look at what other companies are doing and draw inspiration from that? Of course they do. In *every* product market on the planet. Look at how many cars have similar design aspects. It's called market research. Now, if the phone was almost indistinguishable from the iPhone, to where they were trying to make a "knock-off" that's a different matter. But even the iPhone "stole" ideas from other devices that existed before it. And that's not a bad thing.

Steve Jobs was visionary at being able to look at a market and say "this is what companies are doing right, and this is what they're doing wrong. Let's make something that incorporates the right, and fixes the wrong." And the iPhone did a good job of that: taking the clumsiness and complexity out of the smart phone device market and opening it up to the average consumer.

But that doesn't meant that no one else should ever be able to do the same thing.

A Chinese nationalist corporation copying American tech and design? Color me shocked. It should also be noted this is the company the US Government has blacklisted and accused them of spying (a bit ironic given the latest news stories with the NSA).

The bigger question; Does it suffer from poor antenna & "death grip' issues? If not I'd say Apple is pretty safe here.

Besides, with Apples well stated desire to get a larger footprint in China & the iPhone on China Mobile its probably best not to go on the attack against one of their most favored companies. Just say we're flattered & move along.